There's a low spot in one's life. So this is the way it is. So it goes from elation to misery. So you experience all those things, like everyone else. So then I want to say that when I met Suzuki Roshi, as soon as I felt that I knew sort of who he was, and I remember, well, I felt that he was the Hasidic rabbi that I was looking for, and never found, because he had all those qualities. Very interesting. So I recognized all that in him. And I can remember sitting Zazen and going through the difficulties I had, but with his

[01:09]

encouragement, dealing with those difficulties. And I can remember having revelations about practice and about what he was doing. I remember wanting to run back to the zendo and bow down to him, that overwhelming feeling of gratitude. He used to say, you know, the difficulty you have, the people who have the most difficulty really benefit the most from practice. So I was a star pupil, because it was really hard for me. I can remember walking, well, Sashin, keeping my legs crossed. I remember the first Sashin I did when I was sitting

[02:13]

full lotus, and I didn't move the whole time except the last two minutes of the last period. You know that one, don't you? And so I was so disheartened, you know, and so it felt like a failure. And Suzuki Roshi used to bow to us in his office at Sokoji. We all filed, everyone filed through his office, and he would bow to each person, and each person would bow to him. And you never knew what he was thinking, because he would sometimes look at you, sometimes look over your shoulder, some, you know, and everybody said, what is he thinking? But this is a kind of last-minute doksan. You know, it always threw you back on yourself, because you didn't know what he was thinking, and so you had to figure out where you were. Anyway, so at the end, I was the last person out, and I said, I wanted to

[03:21]

test him out, you know. Do you think I should continue doing this? He said, oh, it's not difficult enough for you? He said, if you want, you know, if you want to find something more difficult, you should do that. So, I was, last time I was talking about Tatsugami Roshi and Tatsuhara. I have to go kind of back and forth to three different places, and I'll talk about Berkeley too, as I kind of go back and forth. So Tatsuhara, I was the shuso in 1970, when Tatsugami Roshi arrived. He couldn't speak English, and I couldn't speak Japanese, and nobody could speak Japanese. Dan Welch spoke a little, and he

[04:24]

was a kind of interpreter, but it was difficult for him. And later, Katagiri Roshi came down, but Suzuki Roshi never did come down in that practice period. So Tatsugami Roshi was the ino at Eheji for ten years. He was, I don't know, 60, something like that, and he was a heavy set man, and at one time he was a kind of champion wrestler at Eheji, because the monks used to wrestle each other. He's used to say that when he really put on a lot of weight, that the flab between his legs would flap together. And he used to laugh a lot. But one great characteristic was that he smoked. In those days, most everybody smoked, almost.

[05:27]

I mean, I would say two-thirds of the people smoked. This was still the days when people smoked. I mean, I don't know if you remember this, but when I was growing up, everybody had ashtrays in their house. And when you were a kid, you made ashtrays out of clay, which your mother put in the house. So ashtrays were a thing, and everybody smoked. And so it was very common, but Tatsugami was champion. He smoked all the time. And he had a little pipe, which we think of, you can buy these in Chinatown. They're called opium pipes. That's what we call them. I don't think they are. They're just little pipes. And he had this shredded tobacco, and he'd take a pinch of the shredded tobacco and put it in that pipe,

[06:27]

and then he'd take a coal from his hibachi. When you come into the abbot's cabin, you see this hibachi. That's that box that you see. That was Tatsugami Roshi's hibachi, I think. He left it here. And he used to sit around it, and there were coals in there. So there's a way of putting coals in the hibachi, which you put your hands over the hibachi, and you light your pipe. So he'd take a coal out of the hibachi and light his, take, you know, a couple of puffs. Anyway, it was very satisfying for him. It was very satisfying for us to watch him do that, to watch him be satisfied. But he smoked cigarettes all the time. And people, when they'd go to town, on town trips, they'd order him all kinds of exotic smoking things. But, little by little, he organized the monastic practice at

[07:38]

Asahara. For instance, the shuso used to go out and visit the sick people during zazen. But what he did was, he organized what we now call the do-on-ryo. Somebody to do the mikugyo, someone to chant, someone to do the fukudo to do the mikugyo, and the various positions of the do-ons. So that was a radical new thing. And he taught everybody to, he taught the do-ons to chant. He had a marvelous voice, and his chanting was so ornate, you know, and beautiful. It just knocked everybody out. And so he was teaching people to chant that way. And the way he would do that is, he'd walk around Asahara, and the do-on would come up to him, and they would chant together.

[08:44]

He said, just, you see me walking around, just come on up to me and we'll chant. And so the student would, they would just do it together, and that's the way he taught everybody. So they would go through it with him that way, not just listening to a tape. But people forgot, you know, it's very hard to do it. You have to be, you have to love this thing in order to make it do, to do it well. So I said to him, I said, well would you teach me too? And he said, you should learn from the shadow. That's a kind of Japanese way of speaking. You know, in the Sando Kai, literally the end says, through sunshine, we say, don't take, don't do this, don't do things in vain. Literally, don't do, waste your time in sunshine and shadow. Sunshine means day,

[09:51]

shadow means night. But anyway, so using these kind of terms, he said, you should, you should learn from the shadow. In other words, to learn by observation, which is very much Japanese way of teaching. It's not so much we teach you, but you observe. I remember when I was receiving Dharma transmission from Hoitsu in Japan, he was going through this stuff with me, all in Japanese. I didn't know what he was doing. And finally at the end, I said, will you teach me to do the wisdom water? He said, I taught you to do that during the seminar. Didn't you see that? Anyway, observation, you watch and you observe and that's how you learn something. So I did learn that way, actually. I learned to do the chanting by observing and absorbing that. So he and I got along

[11:00]

very well. There were people he didn't get along well with. A lot of people thought that he was taking over and they kind of resented it. They thought he was trying to take over Suzuki Roshi's place. And being at Tassajara, he was the boss there and it was fine with me. There were people, you know, this was in 70s. We'd been doing Tassajara for three years and there were different kinds of people there. Some people thought that Tassajara was a commune because this was the era of communes. All up north, you know, there were all these communes of different types. And so when Totsugami came, some people said, what's he doing? He's going to teach us the Aheji way. I said, that's great. Let's learn the Aheji way. And these people were saying,

[12:05]

we don't want to do that. I said, why wouldn't you want to do that? You know what we're doing? But this separated the practitioners from the communists, from the communalists. So a lot of people left and went to communes or whatever they did. And the people who wanted to practice stayed. So that kind of set a stage for practice. And so he organized a kitchen practice and we only chanted, when Suzuki rose up to that time, we only chanted the Heart Sutra in Japanese three times. That was our service. And nine bows and echo. And so he introduced the chants to us. And then Sando Kai and the Dharanis. And then Peter Schneider

[13:19]

put together a translation of the Heart Sutra, which was pretty basic Heart Sutra that we chant now. He put that together from various translations. And so that was the first translation we ever had of the Heart Sutra. That was 1970. And so he introduced the chants and the way we do our procedures. And then I remember one time people said, you know, people go into the kitchen at night and take food. What do we do about that? He said, don't put a lock on the door. And everybody said, a lock on the door? That was a radical kind of thing to say. We're all supposed to behave ourselves. Because this is, you know, Ed Brown, you know the story of Ed Brown in the kitchen. He would sit on the counter at night and wait for people to come by. I'm trying to think of what else he did. I know he did a lot of other things.

[14:33]

Did he introduce Oryoki also? Maybe. Yeah, maybe. I think we had Oryoki. We may have had Oryoki before that, but maybe he did. Maybe that was the first time we, yeah. Corbin Chino. Yeah, probably Corbin Chino. I think it was. Yeah. Yeah. That was, I think we had Oryoki by that time. He taught me how to do Oryoki. I was the first person to have the priest bowls. Suzuki Yoshi taught me how to use the priest bowls. So yeah, we were doing Oryoki before that. But he just taught us all the procedures that we use, you know, the basic way that we do things, and created a schedule that was more monastic.

[15:40]

Yeah. So that set things up. In 1969, before that, was a very heavy winter at Tassajara, where we were ill-prepared. But it was a wonderful time because we were snowed in. We were totally unprepared for that. Five feet of snow on the ridge. And I remember the town trip truck was, you could just see the top of it in the snow. It was like an expedition to the North Pole, where you come upon something buried in the snow, you know. And we had to dig it out and get the food out. But it was very, we didn't have much food. We had wheat berries and brown rice.

[16:53]

And wheat berries, you know, you have to chew them in order to get the nourishment. But you know how Zen students eat? They just swallow it. And I can prove it to you, because the toilet's all backed up. And somebody said, there's some, we had a septic tank. Not a septic tank, a cesspool down at the lower barn. And so there was, the cesspool was a problem down there, you know. Something was burgeoning out. So we sent Reb down there. We had to dig down there and find out what's going on. So he uncovered it, dug down there, and there was wheat berries. The whole place was stuffed. The whole thing was, all the pipes were stuffed with

[18:01]

wheat berries. Which were swelling up. But Ravine, who was the gardener, was very innovative. And he said, we must eat wild vegetables. So people went out to the flats and we harvested all these wild vegetables that grew out there all winter. They're out there now. Dandelion leaves and roots and lamb's ears and lamb's quarters and miner's lettuce. And we made these great salads all the time. And it was all live food, you know. Wild, live food. So we kind of lived that way for, during that time. And, but that was 69, just, that was before Tatsugami came. And somebody walked in that, during that winter. You know, we didn't have any heat at that time.

[19:10]

This was the only place there was any heat. So, and the only thing that everybody could think about was heat and food. The only thing that, every topic of conversation ended up talking about food. We have this really easy practice these days, I have to tell you. But at that time, you know, so many people smoked. We used to keep a can of tobacco called top and some cigarette papers over there in the corner. And people would just come in and roll their own, right? But a guy walked in and he met the snow and he, you know, he didn't know anything about where he was going but he said Tassajara is down this road. So he got into his sleeping bag because it's so cold and he inched his way to Tassajara. In his sleeping bag. That's what he said.

[20:12]

And at that time, we didn't let anybody stay overnight. But given the conditions, we let him stay. But we took him out the next day. So, Reb and I took him out. And we had one pair of snowshoes and Reb grabbed those. And this guy and I, we made snowshoes out of tin cans. We cut the sides out of five gallon tofu cans. And they were about this long, not wide. And put ropes, we made a hole and put ropes through them, tied them to our feet and clanked our Tassajara to Jamesburg through the virgin snow. It was wonderful. I hated putting my feet in the snow because it was so beautiful. But it worked. It worked. And then as we came down the road to Jamesburg, we took them off and put them behind some bushes.

[21:20]

And every time I come to that curve in the road, I like to say if I get my snowshoes in the bushes. Anyway, but we'd run out of top. And that was one sub reason for me going out. And then we came back up the creek from Arroyo Seco, like a week later or something. And there were five or six of us. And the creek was swelled up, you know, and we had to get across it. So David Chadwick walked across the creek. And it was just like really a torrent, it was ice cold. And he took the end of a rope with him and tied it to a tree. And we all took our clothes off and held our clothes above our head and walked across the creek with that rope. Those were fun days. I don't know if I can do that now. But anyway,

[22:27]

so I just want to, you know, give you that little incident. Okay, so Suzuki Roshi died in 1971. And then Richard Baker took over. Richard Baker became the abbot. And my thought was, my feeling was that when Suzuki Roshi died, that all of his disciples would work together to create a wonderful Zen Center. But that was not Richard's idea. His idea was, he was going to create whatever it was that was Zen Center. So he kind of scattered the family rather than unifying it. It was very disappointing to me. And I was always very critical of whatever he did. And I felt more isolated in Berkeley. But Richard had great plans.

[23:38]

And Suzuki Roshi, you know, just gave it to him and said, do something. So, and I didn't feel so good about that. I thought surely, you know, he would be more unifying. But that wasn't his idea at all. But he was so powerful. And he knew so many people. And he had organizational skills, which were marvelous. So he really organized Zen Center in a way that was quite spectacular. And, you know, one of the positions, I mean, the finance department, not finance, but the treasury was a place where you practiced.

[24:39]

And there were always five or six people practicing in the treasury. And he had these big time business people come in and teach how to run the treasury, and how to do fundraising and how to make things work on a financial level, on a high level. And it all worked up to a point. But Richard was so, you know, he had the meatiest touch. Everything he touched turned to gold. And so it was really hard to argue with him. It was really hard to challenge that because he was so successful. I just wanted to do Zazen and practice with everybody in a nice way. So when I went to Berkeley, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to

[25:43]

have the Zendo. And I wanted to do organic farming. So the Zendo had this big, huge lot in the back. And I spent all my time, not all of it, but a good deal of time doing organic gardening. And so I grew all these vegetables, and I went out and I made compost. Eric Storley used to bring the garbage from Zen Center to Berkeley, and I put it in my compost pile. And then he brought his violin, and he and I would play music together. That was great. That's the kind of life I like. And people would come by, and they'd help in the garden, and we'd talk about Dharma. And I built up this library. People gave me contributions of books, and I would take the books to Moe's, which is in Berkeley, a big bookstore that gives you credit

[26:53]

for used books. So I'd get all this credit, and then I went to the Buddhist section, and I'd get all these Buddhist books. And then I'd read some of them. That's how I learned about Buddhism, is by getting the books and then reading them. So I built up quite a library doing that. So I was having a great time, actually, developing the Zendo, doing organic gardening. I was even selling produce to some health food markets. And I met my wife, Liz, here. I told you about that. I told somebody. I said that I met her at the Narrows. Right?

[27:57]

Oh, I told you. I met her at the Narrows. In the Narrows, you don't wear any clothes. I didn't wear any clothes. Now we do. Oh, now we do? Oh, my gosh. I haven't been there for a long time. Anyway, we didn't. Nobody wore clothes at the Narrows. And I was playing my flute, and she fell in love with me. That's what she said. You were a completely different person. You were a completely different person. Oh, I was completely different. And so anyway, She thought you were She thought I was Can you So anyway, we were We lived together at the Zendo. And I made her a a

[29:01]

a a little hothouse for growing vegetables. But it was for growing sprouts. And she used to sell the sprouts to the market. So that was really sweet. And then, that was before the big big sprout thing. Before it became commercial. And then it became commercial, and they forced her out. Now people said, Oh, sprouts. And so somebody started growing sprouts on a commercial level and forced her out. But she'd make these sprouts, and once a week, she'd take them to the grocery store, and they would pay her for them. Anyway, so little by little, you know, we were developing Zendo

[30:02]

in the practice there. And at some point, you know, people felt that what was really happening was in San Francisco. So a lot of my people who were practicing with me moved to San Francisco and became students of Richard Baker, which was fine with me. I never tried to keep anybody with me or say, Oh, you shouldn't do that. I always encourage people to go. If that's what you want to do, please go. Because, you know, my bottom line of practice was I sit Zazen every day. If someone wants to come and sit Zazen, I welcome them. If they want to leave, I say goodbye. And no matter how long they've been practicing with me or whatever our relationship is, that's always been my bottom line. And I've always stuck with that, and I've always felt okay about it. But what happens is

[31:03]

eventually, most of them come back. Maybe after 20 years or whatever, which I didn't count on. But I've always had such faith that my practice would sustain me, and that whatever was happening was supposed to happen. So I always felt okay. If nobody came, it was okay. If people left, it was okay. I was just doing my practice with whoever was there. And actually, when people leave, I don't even think about them again until I see them. And I've just kind of focused on what's in front of me. So I never tried to gain students. And I did not call myself a teacher, but people would come and they'd say, Are you the teacher? And I'd say, Well, if you feel that I'm teaching you something or you're learning something from me, then you can think of me in that way, but I'm not

[32:04]

going to tell you that I'm the teacher here. So I maintained that for a long time. And I felt good about that because it helped me to not get ahead of myself. I felt if I'm going to be a teacher, someone is going to have to tell me that. So I was very careful to do that. My wife was always very good about keeping me in my place. True. She would never let me get ahead of myself or aggrandize myself or call myself something special. Our relationship is like this. I see the glass half full. She sees the glass half empty. So I'm always encouraging her

[33:09]

and she's always bringing me down. So in 1972 Richard asked me to if I would be director of Tosahara. And I said okay. So we came to Tosahara and I was the director for about two years. Something like that. And we lived in the library, which wasn't the library then, but that's where we lived. And it became the library later. And she worked in the kitchen, she worked in the garden, I was the director. And it was fine being here, but we hardly ever saw each other. Difficult being a couple here. And that's when I quit smoking. 1978. What I used to do

[34:11]

was go to the zendo and sit zazen, have breakfast, do service, and come back and I felt wonderful. You know, clear-headed. And then I'd sit down and smoke a cigarette. And then I'd go my energy would just go and I just got so tired of that. And I'd quit smoking before, but I always started again. But this time I said, I just don't want to smoke anymore. And I just stopped. And I have never wanted a cigarette since then. It was just so easy. I just walked away from it. And my wife said, well I hid your cigarettes on that day. That's why you stopped smoking. But she may have hid my cigarettes. She knew I wanted to stop. And so these two things happened at the same time. But it really is I just walked away from it. I just

[35:13]

didn't do it again. And I knew that if I ever did it again, I would start smoking. So I've never had another cigarette and I never craved one or wanted one. And I've always enjoyed my breathing ever since then. So then we left Tassajara and went to Mexico for a little while. That's always fun. Came back. Ed Brown and his wife Meg were staying at the Zendo while I was at Tassajara. And that's where he wrote the cookbook at the Zendo. In Berkeley? Berkeley, yeah. So I was always looking for, you know, we had this wonderful place that we rented for $30 $130 a month. And I had, you know, downstairs, upstairs, an attic Zendo. Wonderful Zendo in the attic.

[36:13]

The attic was like it had four sides. Four sides. And and just a big wonderful space, you know, two by fours. Steep stairs. And we really loved this place. You know, it put so much work into it but it was a rented place and the owner would never sell it to us. I kept wanting to buy it for years but he'd never sell it to us. And it was at the time when there was an energy crisis and rents started going property started going property prices that's when they started to escalate. You could buy a house like the one we had that we were going for something like $50,000 $45,000. This was this huge huge place. And he kind of sensed that the housing prices were going up

[37:14]

but everything just skyrocketed at that point. So I went I took my bicycle and I rode up and down all the streets of Berkeley looking for a place for us to move to or buy. And I learned a lot about the streets of Berkeley and I this woman who was a nurse said, well I know this guy this is after looking quite a while who has this these two properties with four houses and he wants to get rid of them. He wants to sell them. And he will sell them to you. He likes you guys. Sell them to you for $220,000. And I thought, oh that's a lot of money. Ha! But we didn't have anything. We didn't have any money. I'll tell you what I did. One time I don't know if you remember Est Remember Est? Well, Werner Erhard

[38:16]

invited psychiatrists and religious leaders to a free Est a free Est party. And so he invited me. And so I went and usually it costs $200. Boy, $200 to go to something like that, that's asking a big price from people. A big commitment. Because $200 then was a lot of money. And I thought hey, I'll ask everybody to contribute $200 to our fund as a way of getting us going. And so I did and I sold the idea of buying this place and people contributed it was hard for a lot of people to contribute that much money. But a lot of them did, a lot of them contributed less and some more but it still wasn't anything. It wasn't enough to but it got the energy going to buy

[39:17]

this place. So here we were buying a place for $220,000 and we didn't have any money not to speak of. But the owner, what he did was he allowed us to buy the place from him without telling the finance company. There was a time when you could there are certain finance companies that would allow you to do that but this one changed their policy right around that time so it was not their policy to do that. So we kept it quiet but we actually bought the place and we were paying the money we were paying his mortgage but we wanted the building the buildings the property so people loaned us money we had to pay a lot of money down and so forth and

[40:19]

so anyway there was a lot of enthusiasm and everything just worked so they didn't find out about it until the finance company didn't find out about it until after about 10 years or so and by that time they just refinanced us so all this kind of stuff was new to me when I first started I kept the dues I showed people $5 a month dues and I kept it in a tobacco can and if I needed some money I would take it out of the tobacco can I lived from tobacco can to mouth Richard came in 1970 right something like that so

[41:21]

so then we bought this place and that's that was a big development we could have a good number of residents we had 4 houses one house is a Zendo and the other 3 houses were residents so we designed a Zendo we designed one house to be the Zendo and we had to fundraise for that because we had to tear it all apart and make it into a Zendo and that was a big project but everybody helped you know we were all there somehow when you need building done carpenters appear it's true when we first started Tassajara we needed carpenters

[42:26]

and carpenters appeared as students and then they disappear when you don't need them anyway the same thing happened to Berkeley carpenters appeared so the carpenters we had to pay them and that got a little messy after a while because you said well it's going to cost this much and it will be done in this amount of time but that's only kidding yourself whenever you have a building project you always fool yourself it's going to cost this much when you know it's going to cost this much and you say it will be done this time and you know it's going to be done much further in the future but you have to kid yourself otherwise you never do it anyway but it was it really brought everybody together everybody contributed people were out there digging ditches in the mud and then we raised up

[43:26]

one of the houses this big two story house in order to put this is a little complicated but you know in Berkeley you can't take living space off of the market off of the city property because living space is so limited so in order to build the Zendo we had to add some living space that we took away from that building so I had to raise a two story building and build a story underneath it I had a kind of partial basement so we got house movers to lift it up and we built a whole story underneath the other building so that we could make this building into a Zendo so it was years of work years of work and I remember the people

[44:27]

living up there in the house and they had to climb a ladder and then drop the marble on the floor and then roll down and kind of teetering anyway so right about that time my wife Liz wanted to become a nurse for some reason she said it never attracted her but after her mother had a stroke she realized that she wanted to be a nurse so she went to nursing school for four years laughter laughter you don't have to do that you can be a nurse after two years but she wanted to do the whole thing laughter you don't have to do that at the same time she got pregnant about half way through she got pregnant and so

[45:27]

we were having she's about the time she was going to deliver we had the Zendo not finished we were sitting in what is now the community room and the aisles were about eight inches wide between the Tommy's but Isaac when she went to nursing school she would leave him off in the Zendo during service just about the same time and so he would crawl around while we were doing service and some of his first words were abloti pitbara laughter laughter laughter so then I'd carry him around in my backpack during the day and I'd feed him the expelled milk and he was very good he was a good little boy and I'd have meddlesome people he'd sit down in the middle of the meeting and play with his

[46:30]

stuff just completely absorbed in his own thing not bothering anybody he was wonderful up to the first five years laughter and then we moved my wife said I want to have a house of our own I want all of you to beware you couples that things will change no matter what you think laughter and I said I have to live at the Zendo I can't move out of the Zendo it's my life and then sometime later she said you know I really want to move I really want to have a house and I said I know that that's very nice I appreciate what you're saying and then sometime later she said you know I really want to have a house I want to have my own house and I said okay I didn't even think about it I just said you want that okay

[47:31]

I didn't think about what that would entail for me or anything I just said okay and so her father gave us the money he gave her her inheritance and we made a down payment on this house and it was very hard for me to change because it put me out of contact in the same way that it was before but other people took up that contact that I had and I had to get dressed and go to the Zendo and get undressed again and put on my robes but it just became my way of life and then I started riding my bike to the Zendo so I get on my bike at 5 in the morning and ride to the Zendo which is what I always do

[48:33]

and I realized that's a plus because that's where I get you know some of my best exercise so and then there are advantages and disadvantages I found out some of the advantages although it took a while but so that's kind of my way is to ride the bike in the morning and go to the Zendo and do Zazen and Dokusan every morning and take care of the business and see everybody and every Saturday we have a Saturday program all morning and then we have a lecture and then once a month we have a one day sitting or three day sitting or five day Sashin

[49:35]

or seven day Sashin and it's a very vital place a lot of good strong activity going all the time and little by little you know the Zendo is built up to just a really big core, large core dedicated people and they take care of it every time I come to Tassajara when I was Abbot of Zen Center which I haven't talked about yet I could come to Tassajara and know that everything was taken care of just like now I come to Tassajara I haven't given Berkeley a thought since I've been here I haven't contacted anybody to say how is it going nothing I just however it's going is the way it's going but I think it's going I know it's going okay so I feel that's a real accomplishment that this practice goes on

[50:38]

without me so I had a difficult time with Zen Center and Richard Baker and I can't even tell you how difficult it was sometimes because I was always a skeptic and a critic of what was going on in Zen Center and so but I said to myself you can't get rid of me Zen Center doesn't belong to anybody it doesn't belong to Richard Baker it doesn't belong to me, it doesn't belong to anybody it belongs to the students and I'm not going to go away

[51:39]

because I really have a lot of Zen Center means a lot to me and I feel an obligation to to stay with what's going on to stay with Zen Center regardless of what's going on so so everybody the priests Richard when Suzuki Roshi was Abbot he had ordained about 15 priests in the last couple of years and but his focus was very much on lay people and when Richard took over Zen Center his focus was on creating a priesthood

[52:39]

so he ordained a lot of people as priests and they became the San Zen students the students that he really paid attention to and the lay Sangha took a back seat it was a very different emphasis and so it was a very strong priest practice and it changed the feeling of Zen Center you know I was of course a priest and interested in priest practice but I was also interested in lay practice and I was not so interested in formal priest practice somehow not the way that Richard was doing it I was interested

[53:39]

in Bodhisattva practice whether a person is a priest or a lay person and my whole feeling about practice is to treat people equally both priests and lay people equally and not focus on one or the other but focus more on who's practicing and what their sincerity is in practice so I was a little I felt a little funny when Zen Center the emphasis in Zen Center was on priest practice and Richard had a way of having everybody relate to him but not relate to each other and that created a kind of hierarchical supremacy in Zen Center which was

[54:41]

very powerful but it was powerful in one direction so the students didn't have a lot of contact with each other but because there were so many students people would have to wait for maybe two years to talk to him it's time to quit and I'll continue again sometime that we decide on OK

[55:20]